While the villa was rented to paying guests for the past two years, for instance, Rangel reported no income from it in 2006 and 2007, The Post has learned. As a congressman, failure to fully list all income and investments can result in civil penalties or criminal charges.

The powerful Ways and Means Committee chairman, a Democrat, owns “casita” No. 412 on the Caribbean Sea at the Punta Cana Hotel, on the lush eastern tip of the country, where he is affectionately known as “el senador.”

His three-bedroom, three-bath villa, which can accommodate three couples, is rented for between $500 in the low season to $1,100 a night in the busiest tourist season and is one of the resort’s most popular, managers and staff say.

“You are requesting the best casita on the beach,” a reservations manager told a Post reporter posing as a customer.

“We are always booked solid on that one between December 15 and April 15. It is always the first one to go,” he said.

The 78-year-old Rangel’s stone-covered cottage – which boasts flat-screen TVs and a panoramic ocean view – was open to hotel guests in the past two years, General Manager Carolina Jones told The Post.

“It’s part of the hotel operation. It’s available to customers at all times,” Jones said of No. 412. Typically, the owners of the casitas earn 80 percent of any rental income, staff said.

But Rangel’s financial disclosure forms, which members of Congress must file annually to the clerk of the House of Representatives, checks “none” for income from the property in 2006 and 2007.

“I have not received any rental income,” Rangel said when asked about the villa last week. “There wasn’t any income.”

In some previous years, Rangel has reported earnings from the cottage. For both 2004 and 2005, he listed rental income of $2,500 to $5,000 a year. For 2001, 2002 and 2003, he reported rental income of $5,000 to $15,000 a year. And in 1990, 1991 and 1992, he reported that he earned up to $5,000 per year in rent. For some years, benefactors such as American Airlines paid for Rangel’s trip to the resort.

Rangel refused to answer further questions about his investment, saying, “I think that’s a private matter.”

His chief of staff, George Dalley, who prepares the congressman’s financial disclosure forms, said it’s possible Rangel is a “shareholder” in the company that owns the resort.

In 2006 and 2007 or other years, Rangel may have “plowed the [rental] money back” into the company, Dalley said.

But in 20 years of filings, Rangel has never disclosed owning or acquiring any shares or interest in the company, Grupo Punta Cana. The company also owns and operates an international airport, three luxury housing developments, a shopping village, golf courses, a spa, seven restaurants and a marina.

At the resort, Rangel is said to be among a small group of friends of the Punta Cana principals who invested early and receive annual profit-sharing from the company, part-owned by retired 94-year-old New York labor lawyer Theodore Kheel.

“They’re rewarded because they took a chance on the project early on,” a manager said.

Dalley said he had “never seen any indication” of company profits earned by Rangel.

“If I was aware of it, I’d have to deal with whether it’s disclosable,” Dalley said, adding that part of any profits or income may have gone to repair storm damage to the Punta Cana complex, make improvements at the resort or “build equity.” Dalley did not provide more specific information despite repeated calls and e-mails to his office in Washington.

A watchdog group says the financial disclosure rules require that ownership of shares in a company, or partial ownership, be reported.

“You have to disclose when you buy shares in a company, and when you receive income from the shares,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center. “If he’s reinvesting his rental income to get additional shares or ownership, that would have to be disclosed.”

In 1987, Rangel reported an unspecified “Punta Cana Yacht Club – purchase” on his financial disclosure form. He put the value at $250,000 or more, the highest category at the time.

Rangel did not list a mortgage that year. But in 1988, he sent a letter to the congressional ethics committee reducing the value of the villa to between $50,000 and $100,000. In his disclosure form for 1988, he also named the Punta Cana Operating Company in Santo Domingo as the mortgage holder.

Two years later, in 1990, there is no mortgage listed on the property in Rangel’s financial disclosure form. The mortgage of between $15,000 and $50,000 reappears again in the 1992 disclosure form and is listed every year until 2003, when it is not disclosed.

In June 2001, Rangel sent a letter to the ethics committee saying his properties, including his home in the Dominican Republic, are “jointly owned by my wife and me.” The letter added that “there was no income derived from these assets” in 2000.

This month, Rangel joined resort owners Kheel and Frank Rainieri in Punta Cana for a private dinner at the opulent Bamboo Restaurant. The beachfront eatery, which serves Kobe beef and beluga caviar, was closed to other guests during the dinner. Police conducted a security sweep of the beach as Rangel joined an intimate group of investors and top brass of Grupo Punta Cana, the company founded by Kheel and Rainieri.

Kheel is a longtime friend of Rangel’s, and a major contributor to his campaigns. In March 2001, Rangel was an important speaker at the opening of the Cornell Biodiversity Laboratory, located on an ecological preserve founded by Kheel at the resort. That year, the Punta Cana Beach Resort paid for Rangel’s trip to Punta Cana, according to Rangel’s disclosure report.

Rangel also serves as chairman of the Ann S. Kheel Charitable Trust, which Kheel set up in his late wife’s honor to help disadvantaged neighborhoods. Recently, the trust handed over $440,000 to the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College, the largest single donation the trust has made since its founding in 2004.

On his most recent trip, Rangel flew to the Dominican Republic capital, Santo Domingo, for the Aug. 16 inauguration of President Leonel Fernandez. He then drove to Punta Cana, about two hours away by car, with his adult son, Steven, and another family member for a vacation, his staff said.

Rangel enjoyed five days at his villa, surrounded by swaying palm trees and hibiscus bushes, dotted with purple flowers. The afternoon that he left, the cottage was thoroughly cleaned by several hotel staff, and a Spanish-speaking couple moved in.

Rangel came under fire in July when he acknowledged holding leases on four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem, where he has lived since the early 1970s.

Amid a furor over alleged favoritism, Rangel has given up one apartment he had used as an office in the 1,700-unit Lenox Terrace luxury high-rise. But he has defended his use of three other 16th-floor units combined into a sprawling, elegant home.

Rangel’s total income could affect his eligibility for rent stabilization.

Under the city’s rent guidelines, owners of rent-stabilized apartments are permitted – but not required – to deregulate apartments if they can prove that tenants earned more than $175,000 in two consecutive years.

Adding his $169,300 congressional salary and other earnings reported in ranges in the disclosure forms, his 2006 income totaled between $172,802 to $185,200. His 2007 income totaled $175,811 to $187,200. And that does not include Punta Cana rental income.